how to add an artboard in illustrator

Fit artboards to artwork

In this Tutorial ill show you how to export individual sketches from a board without having to save each sketch to its own file or crop images later. It's a good workflow for those who use PLM and need to export individual items or when using InDesign for things like linesheets. You'll need Adobe Illustrator CS5 and above.

Step 1: Add artboards around your artwork

We have 1 artboard here for the entire board but lets create separate artboards within this artboard around each of the flip flops.

Go to the Artboard Tool, hold Shift and then drag across your artwork to start adding a new artboard. You need to hold Shift when adding Artboards on top of existing Artboards otherwise you'll move the larger artboard instead of creating a new one.

Add another artboard
Its ok if the artboard isn't perfectly around your artwork since we'll be letting Illustrator snap it in place in the next step.

Btw if you let go of the Shift key as you are creating the new artboard it will let you adjust the proportions.

Step 2: Select your artwork

If you didn't select your artwork before entering the Artboard Tool, hold the CMD key (CTRL on Windows) and it will temporarily change your cursor to the Selection Tool so you can select your artwork.

Select your artwork

Step 3: Fit Artboard to Selected Artwork

Now that your art is selected, go to the Presets drop-down menu on the Control Panel and choose Fit to Selected Art (you might have to scroll up to see that option in the menu). This will adjust the artboard to the bounds of the artwork.

Fit artboard to selected artwork

Artboard is now fitted to the artwork

I went ahead and created separate artboards for the remaining flip flops on the board.

Step 4: Name your artboards

This step isn't necessary unless you would like to organize things a bit and name your artboards. Naming your artboards will also help when exporting later on.

Open the Artboards Panel (Window / Artboards) and double click on the names of the artboards to change the names.

Change the names of the artboards

Step 5: Export artboards

Now we are all set to export our artboards. Go to File / Export.

Give your files a name (the names will be appended with _ and the name you gave your artboards in Step 4) and choose a location to export the files to.

Choose a file format at the bottom (I chose PNG here, which will allow me to have transparency).

Then make sure to check the Artboard box at the bottom. You can choose to export All of the Artboards separately or you can select a single artboard or a range in the range field. Press OK.

Export settings

Here you see the PNG options where I chose a resolution of 300ppi and a Transparent Background color (typically for web purposes you'll use 72 ppi)

Export settings

After you press OK you'll see that Illustrator exported each of the artboards into their own files.

Exported artboards

Step 5: Printing

One thing you'll have to be aware of when creating multiple artboards is that when you go to print, unless you want to print each artboard on its own page, you'll have to choose a Range next to Artboards.

I chose a range of 1 so it only prints out Artboard 1 (the entire board) and not a separate page for each of the other artboards.

Print dialog window

Check out DigiPixie's Women's Footwear Sketches set (where I got the Flip Flop sketches) on our Goodies page. This great set has over 200 shoe sketches and over 100 hardware and trim details.

Thats all for this tutorial please share with friends. -J